We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #36
Google axes Wave
This week, Google announced that they would cease any further development on their real time collaboration tool, Google Wave. When introduced at Google I/O 2009 to a mass of surrounding hype, Google Wave looked set to revolutionise the way groups communicate and function with features such as real time media sharing and intuitive spell-checking.
However, one year down the line, disappointing adoption figures has forced Google to pull the plug on Wave. They state that they will continue to ‘maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects’, whilst the central code and other aspects of the Wave are open source, leaving the window open for future development.
Brand advertisers spend 10 times more on Facebook than they did last year
Having recently reached the 500 million mark, it seems that brands now fully acknowledge Facebook as a prominent and profitable advertising medium. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg states that some of their biggest advertisers have increased spending ‘by at least 10-fold in the last year’, whilst highlighting that the time for experimenting with advertising on Facebook is over, and major brands now seek to go ‘big’ with the social network across a number of their product ranges.
Facebook Profile and Page roadmap update, new Insights for Page admins
Facebook recently announced forthcoming changes will see application boxes and application information sections making an exit, and custom tabs can expect a reduction in width from 760 pixels to 520 pixels wide. It is likely that the change has been commissioned to optimize pages more neatly on smaller screens, and Facebook has enabled the ability to preview custom tabs with the new width restrictions, scheduled to take place beginning the week of August 23rd.
Meanwhile, a new insights product has been incorporated by Facebook into Pages, allowing page admins a clean view of their daily users and interactions. The product is now visible to all page administrators.
Retailers are learning to love the “Like” button
Online retailers reportedly love the “Like” button, with more than 350,000 websites incorporating the Facebook “Like” button on their respective websites. It seems about time too, as it was found that users spend 20% more time browsing a website if directed to it from Facebook.
Heavy Twitter Users Bring Social Activity to New Height
eMarketer highlights that whilst Twitter users are made up of a relatively modest share of total Internet users at 14%, the voice of heavy users is ‘disproportionately loud’. This means that they are more heavily involved with social networks and interactions across other mediums online, meaning that due to their influence online, there are especially important to marketers.
What makes a tweet influential?
HP Labs’ Social Computing Lab has released new research, which measures influence through an ‘algorithm that automatically identifies particularly influential users’. Placing importance in engagement with their networks rather than their number of followers, the algorithm places a score of a user based on their ‘passivity’ and ‘influence’. Other interesting points of the study found that the correlation between popularity and influence was weaker than expected.
Tuenti looks like it will go to Telefonica for $99 million
Hailed as the ‘Spanish Facebook’, Tuenti have reportedly sealed a deal with Telefonica for $99 million for 90% of the share capital. This paves Telefonica’s pathway back into social media, after a previous failed attempt with their platform Keteke back in November 2008.
Nestle Fights PR War On Facebook
Food giant Nestle has recently been running ads on Facebook that highlight their corporate social responsibility, and their approach to the subject of ethics. It is widely seen as a rebuttal to the controversy surrounding the company earlier this year, as videos were released online that saw Nestle’s use of palm oil in chocolate production and involvement in the deaths of orangutans – causing uproar from thousands online.
Sainsbury’s runs recipe challenge on Facebook
In order to encourage parents to think differently about the food they give to their kids during summer holidays, Sainsbury’s has launched a Facebook challenge. Four videos posted once a week will feature parents and grand parents who create a creative recipe for their children. A panel of 9-year-olds will judge the meals and the recipes that “The Tiny Taste Team’ likes the most will be posted online for other parents to copy.
Outdoor brand brings EveryTrail’s GPS-tagged routes to the iPhone
Outdoor apparel brand North Face has teamed up with GPS-travel community EveryTrail.com in order to create an iPhone app. The Trailhead app will track users’ route, distance, speed and elevation as they trek, allowing them to share and store trips, photos and tips for friends and fellow community members on social networks. The app also includes weather forecasts and recommends North Face gear based on how unkind the elements are set to be.
Not unlike Foursquare where users can unlock badges, special offers can be unlocked on Trailhead by completing and logging the North Face Challenge.
Track the beers you drink and check in on foursquare at the same time
But if that all seems like a bit too much hard work, and you’d rather be down the pub with your mates with a pint in your hand, then you might want to try Beerby.
The Beerby app for iPhone and Android helps you keep track of your beers and venues by letting you select the beer you’re drinking from a database of more than 30,000 beers. It also asks for your location and automatically checks you in on Foursquare. This will later help you (and others as it gets saved to the database) to remember what the name of that delicious beer was and where to find it.